Gaza residents expressed fear, resignation and anger on Saturday over the air strikes.

In Gaza, health officials said that the death toll from the Israeli air strikes had reached 120, with hundreds more wounded. Many of those killed and wounded were said to be civilians, including women and children.

Israel's military said that during five days of fighting it had struck more than 1160 targets in Gaza, including rocket launchers, weapon manufacturing and storage facilities, and private homes that it said had served as command-and-control centres for militants guiding the rocket fire. Overnight, the military said it had targeted 10 "terror operatives", six of whom it said were directly involved in launching rockets at Israel at the time.

In a statement Saturday, the military said that Hamas, the Islamist group that dominates Gaza, and the militant group Islamic Jihad "systematically use mosques to conceal weaponry and establish underground tunnel networks, abusing the holy nature of these sites for their own terror-oriented agendas".

"These sites are part of a vast terror network embedded deep within civilian populations purposefully by these terror organisations," the statement added.

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The military issued aerial photographs of the mosque site, surrounded by civilian homes.

During the past five days, there have been injuries but no fatalities from rocket fire in Israel, although militants in Gaza have launched almost 700 rockets and mortars, often reaching much deeper into Israel than in past rounds of fighting, according to the military.

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Israeli officials attribute the lack of fatalities largely to the success of the country's Iron Dome missile defence system, which has intercepted most rockets headed for large population centres, and to the discipline of Israelis who heed instructions and head for protected areas when the sirens go off.

The only Israeli who has died thus far was a woman in Haifa who had a heart attack while running to a shelter.

But Iron Dome does not provide total protection. A rocket struck a house in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Friday night, destroying it and injuring an elderly woman. A man was severely wounded Friday and seven others suffered less serious wounds when a rocket hit a petrol station in Ashdod, an Israeli port city, setting it ablaze.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel was "weighing all possibilities and preparing for all possibilities", including dispatching ground forces to Gaza.

Hamas' military wing said it was ready for a long fight, saying on its website that it had "utilised only a little of what it has prepared for the Zionist enemy".

While there was talk about some efforts underway to broker a cease-fire, none appeared imminent.